Qualla: City of Norwich Aviation Museum

City of Norwich Aviation Museum: Introduction

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Taken by me RobertWalden, CC BY-SA 3.0. In October 2020, a crane lifted a 21-year-old Avro RJ85 regional jet over the new Northern Distributor Road and set it down on the museum side. The aircraft, registration EI-RJN, had flown until recently for CityJet, an Irish regional airline. Now it was retired, and the City of Norwich Aviation Museum wanted it, and the only way to get it past the ring road that had recently been cut across the area was to lift it. So they did. The RJ85 joined a collection that includes an Avro Vulcan B.2, an English Electric Lightning F.53 that once belonged to the Royal Saudi Air Force, and the recovered cockpit of a Supermarine Scimitar, all of them assembled in a corner of the former RAF Horsham St Faith airfield on the northern edge of what is now Norwich International Airport.

Image: Taken by me RobertWalden | CC BY-SA 3.0

City of Norwich Aviation Museum: Horsham St Faith Heritage

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Taken by me RobertWalden, CC BY-SA 3.0. The museum sits on the ground where Norfolk's most active wartime airfield once operated. RAF Horsham St Faith was home to the USAAF 458th Bombardment Group during the war and to RAF fighter squadrons in the early Cold War. After the RAF left, the runways became Norwich Internati...

Image: Taken by me RobertWalden | CC BY-SA 3.0

City of Norwich Aviation Museum: The Vulcan and the Lightning

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Sputnick97, CC BY-SA 4.0. The Avro Vulcan B.2, registration XM612, is one of the most recognizable aircraft in British aviation history. The delta-winged strategic bomber, built to carry Britain's nuclear deterrent through the 1960s and 1970s, has a presence on display that few other aircraft can match. B...

Image: Sputnick97 | CC BY-SA 4.0

City of Norwich Aviation Museum: The Fenland Rescue

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Taken by me RobertWalden, CC BY-SA 3.0. In 2022 the Fenland and West Norfolk Aviation Museum closed. Its collection would have been scattered or lost. The City of Norwich Aviation Museum stepped in to absorb the entire collection, and began building a new 260-square-meter expansion called Fenland Hall to house it. The ...

Image: Taken by me RobertWalden | CC BY-SA 3.0

City of Norwich Aviation Museum: Engines Under Glass

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Lg11uk, CC BY-SA 4.0. Aircraft are the headline exhibits, but the museum's engine collection deserves its own tour. There is a sectioned Rolls-Royce Avon and an Allison 250-C20B turboshaft cut away to show its compressor stages. There are Rolls-Royce Derwents and Nenes from the early jet age, a Rolls-...

Image: Lg11uk | CC BY-SA 4.0

City of Norwich Aviation Museum: The Volunteer Model

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Taken by me RobertWalden, CC BY-SA 3.0. Like the Norfolk and Suffolk Aviation Museum across the county at Flixton, the City of Norwich Aviation Museum runs on volunteer labor. The aircraft outside need constant attention. British weather is hard on metal, paint, and rubber, and an airframe parked outside for a decade r...

Image: Taken by me RobertWalden | CC BY-SA 3.0